Landfall

The Stars Like Sand

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry is a well-reviewed 2014 anthology of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry that I co-edited with P. S. Cottier. You can buy The Stars Like Sand from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

Men Briefly Explained

Men Briefly Explained is my 2011 poetry collection that explains men, briefly. You can buy Men Briefly Explained from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

My Library from LibraryThing

About Me

I'm a writer, editor, anthologist, and now blogger who was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 2.
I grew up on the West Coast and in Southland, then went to Dunedin to go to Otago University before moving to Wellington in 1993. I'm married with one child.
I'm juggling the writing of poetry, short fiction and novels, working part time, trying to be a good husband and father, and working hard to get New Zealand to take effective action on climate change - not to mention all the other problems the world faces. Life is busy!

30 July 2013

Latika Vasil was born in
India, moving to New Zealand with her family as a young child.She has mostly lived in Wellington with a
couple of overseas stints in the States and Singapore.She has worked in the education sector as a
researcher and lecturer, as well as in the public service as a research
adviser.In 2010 she completed the
Advanced Diploma in Creative Writing at Whitireia Polytechnic.Her stories have been published in various
literary journals and anthologies, including Landfall, Takahe and Hue and Cry, and broadcast on Radio New
Zealand National.Her first collection
of short stories, Rising to the Surface,
has recently been published by Steele Roberts Publishers.Currently Latika spends most of her time
writing fiction, working as a freelance researcher and writer, and doing
volunteer work.

1) Latika, how long
have you been working towards this first short story collection?

It feels like much too long!In actuality I’d say the writing of the stories occurred over a period
of 3-4 years and then getting the book ready and out probably took another
year. I’m quite a slow writer and it took me a while to get together enough
stories so that I would have a pool of stories from which I could select the
ones that worked best together as a collection.

2) Rising to
the Surface features a stunning cover by Michael Soppitt: it not only
looks great, but from what I know of your fiction, it also fits what's inside
the book very well. How did you manage to find such a great cover?

I’m glad so many people have responded so well to the
cover!Finding the cover fell into place
quite nicely.I had an image in my mind
of something involving an underwater scene but a surreal take on that.Water is a strong motif in the book with
several of the stories featuring the ocean at pivotal moments in the
characters' lives. I also liked the feeling of people being inside a bubble,
which the cover depicts so beautifully, as I feel many of my characters are
living inside their own little bubble worlds. So having this concept in my mind
I turned to the internet, as you do, and found this photograph by Michael
Soppitt in the UK, and he kindly agreed to me using it! I feel very lucky that
I was able to have some input into choosing the cover.

3) How would you
describe the style of story in Rising to the Surface to a reader
who isn't familiar with your work?

I would say the stories are strongly character-driven and
the settings tend towards urban New Zealand.There’s a lot of contemporary Wellington in the stories.I did try to create some variation though in
style and voice.There are male and
female narrators, characters of different ages and lifestyles, and tonally the
stories are quite varied.Having said
this, I think there are some thematic threads linking the stories – the idea of
disconnection and loneliness.Many of
the characters are at a point in their lives where they are perhaps adrift and
looking for something to hang onto – something a bit more substantial. This all sounds slightly heavy but I’ve been
told by many readers that the stories have a sense of humour too!

4) Was it a difficult
job to choose a set of stories that would work well together in your debut
collection?

First of all I felt quite happy that I had enough stories to
be able to pick and choose!I tried to
select stories that had enough variation to keep things interesting but also
with links and connections so that hopefully it feels like the whole is greater
than the sum of its part. I think this is really important in a collection. It
doesn’t have to be overt but I think there has to be some sense of
connectedness to the stories.

5) Especially in a
debut collection, the first story in the book plays the key role of introducing
the potential reader to the author and her work. What made "The Sand Mandala" just the right story to open the collection?

Yes, it’s like music – the first track on an album is so
important.It sets the tone and hopefully
lures the listener (reader) into your little world.One of the reasons I chose “The Sand Mandala”
is that everyone kept telling me it was their favorite story and insisting I
start with it!I think it works well
because it had many of the features and themes that are mirrored in some of the
other stories – the idea of the chance encounter and how that can be a catalyst
for reflection and change.I also liked
the visual quality to the story as it leaves the reader with lots of lovely
images.It felt like a positive note to
start with even though it is partly about death and impermanence.

6) I'm noticing a
strong trend towards publishers, e-publishers in particular, wanting novellas
at the moment - a complete change from a few years ago, when they were very
hard to place. Do you write, or have you thought about writing, longer forms of
fiction?

Definitely. And
you’re absolutely right about the new interest in novellas.As a writer I guess novellas provide a nice
middle ground between short stories and novels. I’ve always been a huge novel reader so I
would love to write one.This would
involve a different writing approach for me as I tend to be quite intuitive and
chaotic when writing stories.I don’t
overly plan the story at the outset and often just ‘go’ with the character and
follow where they lead.I think with a
novel there has to be some structure and planning ahead of time. Chaos will not
do!I have a few ideas bubbling away at
the moment for novels…

7) Who are some of
the authors who have influenced your own writing?

I have read a lot of short story collections the past few
years – Lorrie Moore, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Alice Munro, have been highlights.Elizabeth Strout’s beautiful collection of
linked short stories Olive Kitteridge has been influential.I like the idea of linked short stories and
would love to explore that in my own writing.

8) And who are some
of the authors you currently enjoy reading and whom you think readers of this
interview might be interested in?

Recently I have been reading several Indian-American
writers.Both Jhumpa Lahiri and Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni are amazing short story and novel writers.

23 July 2013

1Her brother sits on the couch and suggests climbing the Remarkableswith their parents, his barehairy foot jiggling, and shesays ‘hmmm’ while her girlfriendprepares couscous in the kitchen. ‘You weren't there as a kid,’ she says.

2In the levelled lot next door, relief men dig out stumps to make space. She likes to think they communicateby pungent emission—she spendshours against the window.

3It takes a long time to dig out the heavy roots.

4Her girlfriend—Sarnia—leads the way. The system of mountains stretch like panic,montane, a complex breath.

She watches Sarnia's thighs:upturned stratified formations wrapping around her flanks. Her axial crystals, a gulfof sweetness and relief.

5The wind unfastens a sheet of soil from the skin of the track. It sweeps out and over the ridge:a lifted conversation or smudges of rain.

The range grows wider and higher as they move south. Each new face takes on its own personality. She can't see the granite,

but a woman, and then two men in the rock.Far below the lake rests in the basinas the mountain replicates itself across the lake.

6She once went to a talk at the universityabout the creation of mountains. The expert moved over the stage like a buoyant wave of radiation.His voice intruded upward. He told them

it was fairly common for rock that does not faultto fold. It will do this either symmetrically or asymmetrically. There aren't other options:it is upfold or downfold, anticline or syncline.

She left the lecture and walked downtown to a bar.This was during her dark phase: dark dresses,her hair dyed dark in the laundry sink. In the barshe drank white Russians and let a man—older,

a crusher—put his hand between her legs. He gave her a long string of beads he'd brought back from Peru. At least that is what he said.

7Given time, the pressure of water will invert relief. The soft upthrust of rock is worn away and the anticlines become gentle. She rises up and down.

Over time she dissolves mountains by breathing. In bed Sarnia says, ‘There is no universal definition for mountain. It’s okay to live with ambiguity.’

She puts on her teacher's voice with its sexy unspoken argument over elevation and steepness.

‘A mountain must be higher than a hill,’ she saysas the track threads around an elbow of scarps.‘What, then, is a hill?’ Sarnia asks.

9Years later they climb Puncak Jaya, the highestpeak in New Guinea. It will be after the death of Sarnia's sister, but before everything else.

The peak rises five thousand meters above the sea:a precise measure of their strength and courage, or Nemangkawi to the locals.

10Outside the guests are arriving. Her parents’ car pulls up and they wave their hands in front of their mouths. Her brother continues to talk about mountains, and how he found his true essence of self. ‘You should do it, man,’ he sayswith conviction, such a small tremble.

Credit note: "Mountains" was first published inJAAM29 and subsequently included in Sarah Jane Barnett's debut collection,A Man Runs into a Woman (Hue and Cry Press, 2012). It was included in Best New Zealand Poems 2012, where it is available in both text and audio formats. You can also watch a video of Sarah reading the poem. The poem is published here by permission of the author.Tim says: I recently read A Man Runs into a Woman and, although there are many fine poems there, it was "Mountains" that particularly stood out to me for its combination of technical excellence and emotional heft. (Plus, I am a sucker for anything about mountains!). I wouldn't normally run a poem as long as this as my Tuesday Poem, but I hope you will agree with me that the poem's gradual unfolding is worth the wait.The Tuesday Poem:rocks and rolls the place.

Janis
Freegard is an excellent New Zealand poet who features an alter ego called
Alice Spider in many of her poems. This US-published chapbook brings together a
number of the Alice Spider poems. Their characteristic tone is wry and
sometimes surreal, but don’t be fooled: Alice is a character who goes for what
she wants and gets things done. It’s a joy to read such sparky poetry.

Laura Solomon is a New Zealand writer whose work tends towards magic
realism: stories in which fantastic events take place in an otherwise realist
world. It’s a style of fiction most closely associated with Latin American
writing, but in this collection Laura Solomon uses it to make what might
otherwise be low-key stories ‘pop’, as they say in Hollywood: her characters,
many of them girls and young women, show their mettle when confronted with
bride-seeking sea monsters, angels, and men who howl for the moon, among other
unsettling factors. Well worth reading.

I enjoyed this entertaining novel about a large troll and
a small flying Eleniu who are partners in the City Guard of a trading city with
six sentient races. While there's nothing especially original in this fantasy
world, it makes a good backdrop to the murder investigation which is at the
foreground of the story. Although I felt the villain, one of the most
intriguing characters, was kept in the background a bit too long, I had a lot
of fun reading this story – enough that I’ve now bought the second book in the
series.

It took me a little while
to warm up to this collection by Christchurch poet Karen Zelas — I felt as
though the poems were keeping me at arms’ length — but once I got used to her
quiet but insistent style, I enjoyed these sharply-observed poems about
relationships, travel, family, and life in post-quake Christchurch. There is a
lot of poetic technique, and many years of thought, at play here.

03 July 2013

Last week, I was the editor of the hub Tuesday Poem, and I chose Helen Lehndorf's fine poem Oh Dirty River, for reasons I detail below the poem itself. But there's another angle to the story that I didn't know at the time I posted the poem.

Wellington readers will know that there's a lot of debate about the future of Wellington's transport system at the moment. Whereas the Government has decided (quite rightly) to back an expansion of Auckland's rail system, it wants to drape Wellington in motorways and flyovers instead of backing a light rail system for Wellington.

Seeking a bit of light relief for a Facebook post I was making on the topic, a couple of days after I'd posted Helen's poem, I included a link to the Sleater-Kinney song "Light Rail Coyote". I played it to check that it had loaded correctly, listening with half an ear - and thought I heard the phrase "oh dirty river". I checked the lyrics online - not always a guarantee of accuracy, but there it was again, right at the end of the song, not long after the coyote makes an appearance. (Excellent lyrics, too!)

It couldn't be a coincidence - could it? I contacted Helen Lehndorf, and she said that yes, the title of her poem came from Sleater-Kinney's "Light Rail Coyote", and that it was one of her favorite songs. So an adventurous coyote (pictured above) that climbed into a carriage of Portland, Oregon's Light Rail Max system in 2002 inspired the Sleater-Kinney song, which contained the line "oh dirty river", which inspired Helen's poem, which inspired me to post it. Influence isn't only a source of anxiety!

If Wellington does get a light rail system - as it should - I think it will deserve a song of celebration. "Light Rail Tuatara", anyone?